Abstract:

During my trip to Paris I became inspired to write about the foundation of Louvre and put emphases on the consequences for the development of the field of conservation.

Apart from the developments in Rome and Venice, those that took place in Paris in the 18th and 19th centuries were amongst the most influential for the development of restorationconservation in Europe. Despite the intentions of the monarchy to open a picture gallery in the Louvre before the French revolution, a goal that the minister the count of Angiviller had worked steadily for until the revolution of 1778, the Louvre did not open its doors as a museum until the removal of the monarchy.

In 1793 the Louvre opened as a public collection belonging to the people, the state, of France. Just as the king and his advisors had realized that a museum of such caliber would confer great prestige upon them, the post-revolutionary government saw the benefit of being able to realize the project that the monarchy had not managed to achieve and equally, to inspire patriotism by invoking the cultural heritage of the French people. The Assembly declared museum to be?principal establishment of public instruction?.

Achille-Joseph-Étienne Valois, Masterpieces from the Vatican collection exhibited in the grande gallerie of the Musée Napoleon (now the Louvre). Watercolor illustrations for Sèvres vases commissioned to celebrate the marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise in 1810. Sèvres, Musée National de Céramique

The foundation of the Louvre gave impetus to a critical dialog concerning restoration and conservation. The departure points for the resulting dialog were as follows: The idea that monuments of history, science and art are the cultural heritage of a nation, even of mankind, and thus constitute a treasure of immeasurable worth that should be preserved. Their care is thus a grave responsibility. The popular belief that since the French had the audacity to cart away the greatest masterpieces of the lands they conquered, they were morally obligated to care for them correctly and the world was watching.

In the Louvre, transfers were practiced from at least the 1740s onwards. They became highly controversial, due to the secrecy surrounding their execution. The first major transfer was undertaken by Robert Picault (1705-1781), on Andrea del Sarto?s Charity of 1518, in 1750. His technique probably consisted of using nitric acid to affect of peeling of the paint from its original support. The original panel was left intact, while the paint was rolled away and adhered to a new canvas. In 1751, his fame was established with the transfer of Raphael?s St. Michael.

Raphael, St. Michael Victorious,1518, Louvre, Paris,Transferred from panel to canvas by Picault

Transfers are necessary when a wooden support is in particularly bad condition ? ex: insect damage. It is a radical intervention in which original material is lost. The surface of a transferred painting is inevitably affected by the process?Many of the early transfers such as those undertaken by the Widow Godefroid (?-1775) and by Jean-Louis Hacquin (?-1783) were based on the use of humidity to separate paint from support. At least practitioners of this method did not roll the paintings.

Artists flocked to the galleries to copy the work of the old masters. Conservation became an important issue for many reasons, one of which being that the paintings needed to be CLEAN in order to be useful to the copyists.



 The national collections formed at the beginning of the 19th century demanded collections of Old Masters, especially those from the Italian Renaissance This was problematic for a number of reasons: This was not preservation of national heritage but rather the pursuit of status symbols and an exercise in connoisseurship. Many of the pictures available had been assigned legendary and inaccurate attributions in the previous century. Many of the pictures available were in terrible condition, covered with dirt and yellowed varnish. These pictures needed to be cleaned a studied, in a professional manner which would satisfy the public.



Example of color change when an old varnish isremoved (20th century cleaning): Giorgione, The Adulteress brought before Christ, Glasgow City Art Gallery

These controversies was the viewer?s shock on being able to see the paintings? original coloration and their actual condition ? formerly obscured under dirt and varnish – which were sometimes revealed to be far less than pristine. Contemporary taste actually approved of the effect of such ?patinas? and seeing cleaned paintings next to uncleaned ones only heightened the foreignness of their look:



Later the subject of another cleaning controversy in 1860,which resulted in the censure of the curator of paintings, Frederic Villot. The cleaning revealed the condition of the painting, which had been transferred earlier.

French restoration policy at the Louvre was thus continually scrutinized, putting pressure on restorers to act judiciously. The policy was also attacked from within France, by art lovers and opposition politicians jockeying for positions of power in the new government. Criticism was a powerful weapon and was not always motivated by concern for the works of art.Museum administrators were forced to formulate and communicate their restoration policy. The precision with which this was done was groundbreaking; openness was encouraged and paintings both undergoing restoration and fully restored were displayed in order to educate the museum going public on occasion.The most recent developments in many fields were applied to the problem; scientists were brought in as consultants. However, restoration policy remains contentious even today, and was not resolved in the 19th century despite the advances that were made in terms of articulating the museum?s approaches to treatments.